Day 6 - IFA International

Vision Meets Industry

Vision Meets Industry Session 6 ENTERTAINMENT CityCube Berlin 8 Sept. 2015 3:30-4:50 pm The Sky – With No Limits Pay-TV becomes universal as digitalisation leads to “ecosystemhopping” That’s Entertainment – Today How can you own something that can be copied freely? The IFA+ Summit this year has been looking at the future of entertainment – and how to deal with the burning issues that are affecting us even today. To that end, Trent McConaghy, Founder and CTO of Ascribe, hosted a session entitled, “Rewiring the internet, for Creators”. We asked him to tell us more… Pay-TV has changed. It used to be linear, on one big screen, via a Set-Top-Box and one remote control at home – often as a family experience. Today this experience is becoming more personal and needs to remain a “fluid” experience. At the IFA+ Summit, Julia Schuler, Vice President Product Development, Sky Deutschland took a close look at the evolution of TV viewing. We asked her to explain her thoughts. Today, our consumers watch Sky across multiple screens. Not just the content itself but also the user experience of all its components and features is becoming crucial. As a traditional pay- TV company we had to learn a lot about how we could meet our customer demands in the future. Sky has been the pioneer in the digital transition process of TV in Germany and still is pioneering in various fields such as Ultra HD. We started this journey 5 years ago with our first streaming-based products and are of course not stopping here. Please tell us a little more about Sky Deutschland and your own role on a daily basis. Sky Deutschland has established successful pay- TV in Germany – with about 4.3 million customers today. In background of the digital transformation of our business and entire industry, Julia Schuler Vice President Product Development, Sky Deutschland Sky has become much more than a traditional pay-TV provider offering high quality product experience across all devices our customers have in their homes and use out of home. My role in leading Product Development at Sky is to develop the best-inclass user experience across all of these existing and new platforms. What do you see as being the biggest challenges in your industry today? Digitalisation has reduced market entry barriers, traditional value chains are dissolving and fragmentation of hardware leads to an “ecosystem hopping” on the consumer side. Plus consumers are starting to use content in a different way – not only across devices but also at different times and in different ways on a daily basis. Successful media companies need to constantly adapt to all these parameters, which are in constant change. The issue is: how do you "own" something digital when bits can be copied freely? Creators are getting a raw deal on the internet, because there’s either high friction to compensate them, or they’re getting an very low share of the proceeds when audiences enjoy their creations. So how can artists get fairly compensated on the internet? It turns out that visionaries of hypertext foresaw these issues in the 60s, and even proposed solutions. However, those proposals were too complex and hard to build. By the early 90s, the simpler WWW had emerged but in its simplicity, it left out attribution. We ask a new question: can we retrofit the internet for attribution, for creators? It turns out the answer is yes, with the help of big data, artificial intelligence, and bitcoin blockchain technology. This talk explores how the dream of attribution, ownership, and compensation on the internet is being revived. Please tell us a little about your organization and your own role on a daily basis. Ascribe enables creators to share and sell their digital intellectual property, without losing control. We’re making IP easy to use for creators. Our solution leverages the bitcoin blockchain, machine learning, and legal frameworks. We're Berlin-based, VC-funded, and have decades of experience in start-ups, banking, intellectual property, and creative industries. As CTO, I run engineering. With my co-founders and team, I work to translate our mission & long-term vision into a roadmap then week-to-week execution in product & marketing. What are your thoughts on the fact that IFA has created this industry summit? Fantastic. Most businesses only think with a very short time horizon – the next quarter, or year, or 5 years max. But sometimes, good things take time. So why not design the future we want in 20 or 100 years’ time, then work backwards to the businesses we can build today that take us towards this future? It’s good for business, and good for humanity. Trent McConaghy Founder & CTO, Ascribe why not design the future we want in 20 or 100 years’ time…? 10